CHAPTER XXVI

MR. DABNEY AGAIN SUFFERS, AND THE YOUNGER GENERATION DOES NOT KNOCK AT THE DOOR, BUT WALKS RIGHT IN AND TALKS EXTRAORDINARY STRANGE TALK

Old Mrs. Wynne, who in spite of the failure of her own plans, persists in considering this match her own making, and who came all the way from Ludlow to attend the wedding, paid us a call the next morning, to my great surprise.

While she was sitting in my best chair, who should dash in but Mr. Dabney on his way downstairs. On catching sight of Mrs. Wynne, he was for a swift retreat; but the old lady stopped him and compelled him to sit down and be courteous if not courtly.

As they conversed, her eye, by malignant chance, alighted upon my copy of the _Pickwick Papers_, and she asked me to hand it to her.

"Ah, yes," she said, "_Pickwick!_--what a wonderful book! You, Mr. Dabney," she continued, "being a literary man, will be interested in hearing that I once met the author of this work."

Mr. Dabney shot me a tragic look.

"Did you indeed?" he said, adding quickly, "but, of course, you told me about it when I had the pleasure of meeting you at dinner in Queen Anne's Gate."

"I don't think so," said Mrs. Wynne. "I don't remember it."

"Assuredly," said Mr. Dabney, "I remember it very vividly."

"Very strange that I should not," replied the old lady; "but it happened in this way. I was at Manchester with me dear husband some time in the sixties. I forget the exact year. Me husband was there on business, and it happened that Mr. Dickens was giving one of his inimitable readings. We all stayed in the same hotel, and Mr. Dickens breakfasted at the same table as ourselves. The toast was not good, and I remember that Mr. Dickens..."

At this point I stole gently from the room, for Mr. Dabney, I felt, must be rescued at any cost. Hastily scribbling a note I gave it to Ern, who was bending himself into a hoop on the landing, and telling him to count ten and then bring it to my room, I returned.

Mrs. Wynne had just reached Mr. Thackeray. "It was," she was saying, "at a conversazione at the Royal Society. Me dear husband and I were leaving at the same time as the great man..."

Here came a rap at the door.

"A letter for Mr. Dabney," said Em, "marked urgent."

"Excuse me a moment," said Mr. Dabney, and took it. He read it gravely, cast me a glance of intense gratitude, and murmuring something about a very important matter, bade Mrs. Wynne a cordial farewell and hurried away.

I heard a jingling of coins outside, and as Ern immediately afterwards descended the stairs four at a time, I guessed that for the moment bulls' eyes superseded contortions.

"A nice man," says Mrs. Wynne, "but not a good listener. His thoughts seem inclined to wander. I hope he is clever in proportion. Did you say he wrote novels? I must read one."

The next day Mrs. Wynne returned to Ludlow, taking the Queen Anne's Gate family, with the exception of Lionel, with her. I was left alone.

It was the first time that Naomi had not been within call ever since I returned to England; and I was lost.

I found that I had nothing to do. Even London withdrew its fascination. I went down to Norfolk to see our old home, and hurried back plunged in melancholy. I drove to Paddington early one morning, intending to go to Ludlow and stay at The Feathers; but at the station I thought better of it, and returned.

In a kind of despair I became a clubman again, and with the utmost regularity for a few days sat in arm-chairs and read papers and novels and permitted cowed waiters to approach me and supply my needs. I am no clubman by nature, but my father having years and years ago paid my entrance fee to a Pall Mall monastery, I had felt it a pious duty to keep up the subscriptions.

Poor little Drusilla, I thought, how much more efficacious than fines or imprisonment it would be if the magistrates had sentenced the suffrage revolutionaries to spend a few hours observing through a grill the daily routine of a club life! Never would they revolt again. Such a hopelessness would settle on their hearts and brains as would crush out every emotion save despair. Woman's chance in England will come only when she has destroyed the Club.

The evening before the Wynnes returned I went home desperately tired. There had been a heavy thundercloud over London most of the day, and the city was without air. I could easily have slept on an Embankment seat, I was so weary.

On lighting my lamp I had a shock; for in my chair was sitting a young man. Perfectly silent he sat, with an ease of manner, a quiet suggestion of possession, that I resented intensely. He wore a loose tweed suit, and held a pipe in his hand. I could not see his face.

As he gave no sign of observing my entrance I coughed, and then asked if he were waiting for me, and what could I do for him. He replied that he was waiting for me, but that whether or not I could do anything for him remained to be seen. His voice sounded strangely familiar too, but still he did not move his head, which was a young head with plenty of brown hair not too orderly.

I had a feeling of fear. It seemed uncanny. I advanced nearer, wondering what to do next, when he got up lazily, stretched himself, yawned, and looked round.

I saw his face for the first time, and held to the table or I should have fallen.

"Don't you know me?" he asked.

Know him? Of course I did. It was myself.

Not myself as I am to-day, but myself of twenty-one. I now remembered the suit perfectly too.

I continued to hold on to the table and I felt a little sick. I hate and dread the supernatural. But he soon put me at my ease, or thereabouts.

"How are you?" he said. "I can see it is time I called. Let me look at your face. Yes," he said, after a long scrutiny, "selfish. You think too much of your comfort. You don't believe in anything: there is a self-satisfied superior hardness in your eyes. You have not cried for years. You profess to feel sorry for people, but your philosophy is stronger than your pity. When did you last do an impulsive thing?"

"Impulse," I said, "is largely a matter of inexperience. I have seen a deal of the world." (At the same time I felt that he was doing me a vile injustice. I really was, I remember thinking, a very kind man.)

"Also," he added, "you're getting fat."

"No," I said, "not fat. That's merely the solidity of age. Remember, I'm getting on."

"Remember," he said bitterly. "How can I forget it? That is why I'm here."

"What do you mean?" I asked him.

"Mean! My dear fellow, I have been watching you for years--ever since you dropped me, in fact, and I've longed to get a good straight talk with you; but I wasn't allowed. Nothing can happen till it is time."

"And why," I asked, trembling and chilling a little, "is it time to-night?" (But I knew why.)

"I can't say," he replied, "but here I am. Let's see, how old exactly are you?"

"Fifty-five."

"Is it so long? How do you spend your time? What do you do?"

"Oh," I said, "I've retired. I read a good deal. I visit my friends. I walk about and talk to people. What should I do?"

"Do you ever get drunk?" he asked.

"Certainly not," I said.

"No, I thought not," he replied, with a sneer. "Nothing so enterprising. You keep on the safe side. But don't forget your old views as to the value of the occasional lapse--let me see, what were the words?--'the humanising influence of the orgy.' You've grown out of all that, I suppose."

"One's health does not admit it at my age," I said.

"Health!" he echoed. "Of course. I had forgotten that. Or rather, I have laughed at it so long. But tell me, don't you remember me at all? We were very happy, weren't we?"

"Fairly," I said.

"Have you gone back on everything?" he continued. "All those old schemes over the red wine in Soho? We were to do such things! We were to be so keen for the best, and the best only. The best work and the best emotions. We were to help so frankly. We were to do so much to break down the bad barriers between men and women; and now, tell me, what have you to show for it all?"

I didn't feel very comfortable.

"What have you ever done for any one?"

How can one answer questions like that? I had not been so utterly unhelpful, I knew, but I could not begin a catalogue of my beneficences; it was too ridiculous.

"What have you done for any one to-day?" he went on.

I said nothing.

"Where did you dine to-night?"

"To-night I dined at my club."

"What did you do after?"

"I smoked a cigar, read the papers and skimmed a novel, and then came back."

"Did you speak to any one?"

"No one, except a waiter."

"What did you do all day?"

"I was at my tailor's this morning; after lunch I went to Lord's."

"And you call that life?"

"Well, it passed the time."

"With all the world at your feet?"

"I have been busy enough in my day."

"Yes, in a Buenos Ayres counting-house. Did you make money?"

"I have enough."

"Enough for what?"

"For security; for my simple needs, and a little over."

"Your simple needs! Heavens, man, you make me furious. How dare you speak to me of your simple needs and your scrubby little club routine--me, with the old abundant programme still on my lips! Can't you put yourself in my place for a moment and think what it means to see every fine generous resolve gone wrong? How do you suppose it can strike me--yourself at twenty-one, remember--to see such a miscarriage of idealism as you! You, who began so well, and promised to rise so high above the petty ruck; you, who were famous for your fearlessness as a critic of conventions and shams. And now, how do I find you?--an old, timid, selfish clubman, poring over the papers in a cold sweat for fear of losing any of the dirty little dividends that give you the hogwash you call comfort and security. Security! To think that I should ever hear you use such a word. It was not in your dictionary in my day.

"Oh yes," he hurried on, "I know you're a gentleman, and all that; but that's what's wrong. You weren't going to be a sterile gentleman, you were going to be a real man; you were going to help put things right. And now what do I find you doing?"

He paused for a moment. Then he continued his catechism. "Why didn't you come home now and then from Buenos Ayres?"

"I couldn't, there was no one else to take my place."

"Why didn't you throw it up, then?"

"One does not throw things up."

"No, one does not. One clings to one's little pettifogging habits and one's little mean salary, even in a foreign land, while all that is most real and beautiful and best worth doing is beckoning one away. Prudence dictates the course, expediency controls. And so you turned your back on England and your home for over thirty years. Friends and relations died; it was nothing to you."

"It was everything to me."

"And yet you did not come home. You went on languidly and happily driving some one else's quill in that state of apathetic indolence which denationalisation seems to carry with it, and quietly allowed all that was best in life to slip from you. I know, because I was there."

"Then why didn't you stop me!" I cried.

"Ah! I have touched you," he said; "you have admitted all. I did not stop you because those are the things we have to do without help. I am here to-night not on your account in the least, you have passed beyond my interest, but on account of some one else. Why aren't you married?" he said swiftly.

I began to see what was coming.

"Why?" he repeated. "Have you never loved?"

"Not sufficiently, I suppose."

"Don't you love any one now?"

"How dare you?"

"I am here to dare; remember, I've never grown up; daring is natural enough to me. _I_ don't ask for security. Do you love any one now?"

I said nothing.

"You love Naomi," he said.

I said nothing.

"You love her," he repeated, "and--God knows why--she loves you."

"Say that again!" I said.

"She loves you."

"How do you know?"

"I know."

I felt horribly giddy again.

"Now listen," he said, and his voice had become kinder. "This is your last chance. Be a man; give up this amiable idling and do something decisive. Marry her; she's the best woman you'll ever meet, and she'll make you work. Marry her, old chap; ask her to-morrow, and begin to live again. You've been dead too long."

"Does she really love me?" I asked him; but he had disappeared.

When I woke up I found I was still in my clothes on the sitting-room floor. I crept to bed in a daze.